Ratchet

Very slowly, but surely, I'm getting around to working on my Jeep.

In fact, this may be one of the slowest builds in history, as my funds are limited. And I went from having a garage that I had 6 different car projects in at one time...to living in an apartment complex that doesn't allow serious mechanical work. Not awesome.

The goal, however, is to build this into a sort of support vehicle for my Jeeping buddies, when we go off on trail weekends. For my own use; my daily driver is a sports car with the trunk space of a loaf of bread...so having cargo space is very appealing.

I plan on going through the engine, giving it a bit of a refresh, seeing as it does have 250k miles on it. Upgrade the wiring, etc. Improve what can be, fix what needs be, etc. As much work done by myself, as possible. For better or worse. I care for humor more than pride, so you'll get to see pics of all failures as well.

Here's how she started:




Busted rear window, no spare, tires seem to be going flat, etc. But overall, not terrible.

However, the first trouble I ran into was that my tires were pretty badly rotted. I thought I could just put air in them, but closer inspection showed they needed replaced. Honestly, not sure why/how the guy was still driving this thing around on these...




That seemed like an easy fix, and I found a set of Grizzly wheels and tires, including the spare, for a reasonable price.

That's when the problems began, and a sequence of heavy cursing.


Round 1: Able to remove the driver front wheel only. Rear driver side lugs come off, but wheel is fused to the hub. Unable to budge the lugs on passenger side.

Round 2: Impact wrench and several cans of PB blaster employed. Out of 10 lugs, I am able to loose three of them.

Round 3: Breaker bar and more PB blaster. This loosens four additional lugs. The remaining three strip. Sledgehammer is the solution for the fused wheel.

Round 4: Breaker bar, and bolt grip set. Unable to loosen lugs. Believe witchcraft to be at play.

Also, in the midst of this, I decided to repair the window. $10~ at a Pull-A-Part from an identical '89 Limited...and shazam. No more window bag.

So, this got her sitting like such:



Don't worry, all the lugs are actually present on those wheels. They're just missing the chrome bits on them. The passenger side, remains cursed.

Bigger tires in the future, but this was for a more immediate fix.

Did I mention that in the middle of this, the battery died, and the alternator seems to be a useless trinket? No mobility for me at the moment. Looking into fixing that, may have a solution this week.

Also, I saw a few different posts about swapping out the hatch struts for either Ford Explorer, or Windstar. Seeing as the rear struts were as useless in holding up the hatch as using a pair of kittens to do the same job would be....headed back to Pull-A-Part and $13 got me a pair of Windstar struts.

Very happy to no longer risk damage to my skull.





More, as more happens!

At some point, I'll put together some sort of comprehensive list of what I need to do, want to do, etc.

Ratchet

Okay, so I was able to get her relocated, and start really jumping into things.

Got the engine de-greased (mostly) and pressure washed.



Started pulling all the A/C and cruise control equipment, as I won't need it. Which got me about to here:



Yeah, a lot of it is still in there. I did relocate the charcoal canister though, and updated it to a newer one.

In the meantime, we took another crack at the wheel that wouldn't come off. A 450ft-lb torque wrench loosened two more, but the third wouldn't come.

Then this happened:


And that's totally not useful.

So, then we took an ox-acetelyne torch to it, and cut out the lug, and the metal around the lug. Then a few dozen smacks of the sledge hammer. Even drove the Jeep around, without any lug nuts attached.

The wheel didn't budge. Not a wobble. Honestly, it's held on by some kind of enchantment.

So, skipping over that, and moving onto more things.

Went back by Pull-A-Part and 9$ got me the Durango filler, a radiator cap, and the new heater hoses.

Which, considering how new this thing looks...I'm really happy with that:



Got too dark to install it, but I did get the heater hoses installed. Which cleans up my previous mess to this slightly less mess...




More to come. Still need to pull the rest of the A/C stuff, clean everything else up a bit, and fab a few brackets for where I've relocated things.

But I'm pretty happy with how all that's coming along.

Ratchet

Things are shaping up.

After you remove most of the A/C and pressure bottle...and some of the vacuum system...you end up with a functional mess.






First, I intended to use the bracket and overflow bottle from a newer Cherokee. Which means the bracket for the relays had to go. And the ignition coil/control module were in the way.

Moving the ignition coil/module was really simple, as there were a few long bolts running through the firewall. Two happened to be spaced almost exactly the same distance apart as the original mounting.

So two minutes later, and some aggravation with the wiring, and I got this:





In the midst of that, I thought about moving the relays over to the firewall too. Disconnected the O2 sensor heater and starter motor relay, and left them basically where they were. This gave me the slack I needed for the other relays, and diagnostic ports. Had to modify the bracket a little, and wound up with this:





Pretty happy with that. Still have more cleaning up to do with the rest of the wiring harness. And need to buy replacement pos/neg battery cables, as both are melted through and bare wire in different spots.

Not a whole lot of deleting/relocating left to do. Just a few minor things. Need to replace the rear CCV. Fix the vacuum hose to the EGR, as it was just taped together. Probably replace all the wiring to the starter, as most of that is rigged or damaged.

Anywhere, here's where we ended up today. Still a bit of a mess, but a whole lot better.

Ratchet

Right-o. I think I mentioned that I needed new battery cables. It was taking 30~ seconds for the engine to fire up. Once fired, and given a few seconds more, it would stable out with a pretty normal idle. Fuel pressure was good, so I looked towards electrical.

This is not what you want under the hood. Or really, anywhere in your vehicle.





At some point, I intend to upgrade the cables to a larger gauge. But funds are limited at the moment, so that'll come later.

As soon as I hooked up the new cables, I ran into another issue. Where I had the starter relay connected to the new bracket, I was shorting out and shooting sparks everywhere.

And the battery I was trying to use to start, was mostly dead. Even so, it seemed to have a much better attempt at starting than previously. Stopped where I was, as I didn't want to make things worse, and started going back through my connections.

Also decided to change how I was routing things a little bit.

So, here's the new battery cables, and the beginning of the new wiring setup. If nothing else; it's a lot easier to check everything, with so much out of the way.





Wasn't able to charge up the battery to see whether I fixed the shorting problem, or to see how well it would start. Decided to call it quits for a bit.

But not before trying the fitment on this really small trans cooler I picked up for $15.







On and on it goes, chaps.